Mary Creagh has dropped out of the Labour leadership race, expressing her dismay at Ed Miliband’s attitude to business and urging the next leader not to regard business as a vested interest with which to pick a fight.

Liz Kendall has become the first candidate for the Labour leadership to say she is willing in principle to sign up George Osborne’s new fiscal rules requiring a government to aim for an overall budget surplus in normal times.

Andy Burnham, the frontrunner for the Labour leadership, was jeered during the first hustings at a trade union conference when he refused to say outright whether he was opposed to an annual benefits cap of £23,000.

Andy Burnham, the favourite for the Labour leadership, warned that the party should be careful not to distance itself from everything it has stood for in the last five years, as the candidates addressed a hustings for the parliamentary party.

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Mary Creagh has dropped out of the Labour leadership race, expressing her dismay at Ed Miliband’s attitude to business and urging the next leader not to regard business as a vested interest with which to pick a fight.

Liz Kendall has become the first candidate for the Labour leadership to say she is willing in principle to sign up George Osborne’s new fiscal rules requiring a government to aim for an overall budget surplus in normal times.

Andy Burnham, the frontrunner for the Labour leadership, was jeered during the first hustings at a trade union conference when he refused to say outright whether he was opposed to an annual benefits cap of £23,000.